(f)unemployed

I’m unemployed without a backup plan. I left my job as a high school Spanish teacher after deciding that teaching second generation immigrants their own language was not quite as fulfilling as Ms. Honey made it out to be. Not to mention after years of teaching not a single student ever performed a telekinetic feat, nor did anybody ask if they could be adopted—something I find especially insulting given the home lives of some of these kids. I would have said no, but still. It’s nice to be asked.

So, I’m on the job hunt. A common complaint amongst job hunters is applications being sent off and never responded to. This, interestingly, has not been my experience. I seem to hear back from everybody. Quickly too, like they’re eager to remind me that I am, in fact, a lost cause. “Thanks for applying”, they’ll write. But what they really mean is “Keep dreaming, cupcake. You have no shot. No chance. The time you wasted drumming up your crummy little application would have been better spent learning to tie a noose, or loading a revolver.” 

As I apply for different jobs, I have to try to repackage the past two years into something viable; looking over my teaching career, cherry picking through my experience to cobble together something a hiring manager might find appealing. Communication, relationship building, attention to detail, all skills you’d think would be attractive especially given they’ve been sharpened against the most refining, grating surface imaginable: fourteen year olds. Even so, I’ve been having trouble.

To give a clearer idea of how the job hunt is going, here’s an example:

I recently applied for a marketing internship posted on craigslist. Internship. Craigslist. This is what it’s come to. The listing had absolutely no information besides an email to send a resume. 10 minutes after sending I received a phone call to show up for an in-person interview an hour later. 

Someone with self respect might begin to question the legitimacy of such a posting. But I don’t have any of that so I threw on my blue button down and raced to the address posted on the listing. A restaurant, it turned out, with 8 other prospects lined against the wall. It was comforting to see the face of desperation does not discriminate by age, race, or gender—all of us unified by a willingness to show up to an undisclosed location and interview for a position without mention of salary, hours, or even a description.

Two 20 year olds hosted the interview and I could tell they were ecstatic to judge professionally. The looks on their faces told me this had been a recreational pastime of theirs for years, and only recently were they getting compensated to do so. Their arched eyebrows and pursed lips had a refined quality, a look that had been honed from years of vicious critique against countless unsuspecting passerbyers. I envied their position, as I was doing the same right back but I wasn’t getting paid. “Stupid”, I thought. “You two look stupid and dumb” (again, I’m no professional, just a hobbyest. A lover of the craft).

By the end of the interview they told me they liked me (“I knew these two were bright”, I thought) and asked that I return in an hour to speak with the owner. The owner, it turned out, was a true mogul. Sporting a blue blazer, a satchel over his shoulder, and an earbud in his ear that he used to answer phone calls every 8 minutes. He was willing to interrupt any and all conversations he was engaged in, including our interview. 

“I like your energy”, he told me after glancing over my cover letter for roughly 4 seconds. This, of course, made perfect sense to me. It’s after second 5 that interest generally begins to wane. He told me to hang tight as he sent all the other applicants out the door, everyone besides the person who I happened to have sat next to waiting for the interview. He was an artist, recently graduated, and perusing his options; we talked throughout the entire process. He was level headed, kind, and without that air of desperation the rest of us were enveloped in. 

Mr. Mogul instructed us to follow him out the door to further discuss the world of marketing. He was enthralled with himself, and pinned the two us as idiots. Between us both, he was half right, however even for me the information he attempted to instill felt a bit elementary. “See that sign?”, he said, pointing at a sign. “That’s marketing. Marketing… it’s all around us”. We nodded encouragingly, as he continued to explain marketing in a series of increasingly convoluted metaphors. “People, you see, are split between two distinct groups. Some are chickens, and some are eagles. Chickens and eagles, you see? And some eagles, well, they’re actually chickens, but in disguise. Those are the ones to look out for.” 

As I followed the mogul down the street and around the corner I wondered which feathered creature I most accurately personified. Completely enveloped by this internal debate I didn’t notice we had stopped in front of a motorcycle. It was his, and he brought us there to explain that he not only worked hard, but he played hard too. This, it turned out, was the only reason we were walking around the block because immediately after we admired the bike we turned around and walked back to the restaurant. 

When we returned he explained what he was looking for: two guys like us. What exactly he saw in us was unclear, however over the course of the job description he used terms such as “hype men”, “life of the party”, and “like a frat house, but safe”. Once he concluded, and with no room for questions, he extended his hand asking, “you in?”. 

It was at this moment I learned a valuable lesson about myself—I’m spineless. I didn’t know a thing about the job and still I was prepared to shake hands and begin my career in god knows what. All I’d gathered from the conversation was a fresh insecurity about what kind of bird I was. My new friend, on the other hand, immediately questioned the pay, the hours, and what exactly the job even was. Questions I had completely forgotten about, so caught up in whether or not I was a chicken. 

The mogul responded to the pointed, exacting question with a riddle. “Let me tell you a story”, he said. “I once purchased a VCR from the trunk of an SUV. Or was it a DVD player? Well anyways whatever it was, it came out the back of an SUV from a guy in a tank top. It was $30. Now the box was clearly labeled as a beautiful new VCR, or DVD player? Whatever it was, I bought it, brought it home, and I opened it. Well, imagine my surprise when I found a brick inside. You might think, ‘what a waste of money!’; well, for me this was the greatest investment of my life because it taught me a valuable lesson. What it taught me is that true value is found in what something can do, not from what it says it can do. Now, are you in?”. Once again, with no questions answered, and another identity crisis to contend with (am I a brick?), I was completely prepared to shake his hand. But by the grace of god my new, competent friend explained the many other options he had to consider, saying he would let him know in a week’s time. I feigned many options myself and claimed I too would let him know in a week’s time. 

We left the mogul and the two of us rounded the corner to further breakdown the interview. Flattered as we were to be selected, we ultimately decided that with the constant riddles, vague explanations, and being compared to chickens and bricks, the work environment was unlikely to be very formative for our careers. We got each other’s contact and went our separate ways. I have yet to hear from the mogul and as time continues to pass I can’t help but wonder if he was a mogul at all, or simply a brick, wrapped in a VCR box, disguised as an eagle.